[Editor’s Note: This is Dinosaur Bear’s 200th post – how crazy is that!? Who would have thought that I’d be posting about moving to Iceland for the 200th post of this blog! Life is indeed odd with its twists and turns. For a post that celebrates Dinosaur Bear’s history of “stuff and things” as well as its longtime relationship with the Nordic countries, click here.]

Greetings,

Last time I engaged in a tongue-in-cheek exposé of the bar exam, this time around I’m back to the chronological adventure of my life. When we last met I had started my voyage to Iceland and I had just arrived at O’Hare in Chicago. So that’s a fitting place to pick right back up. Despite hearing some horror stories we made it through international security at O’Hare much quicker than expected, which was nice because we were running behind schedule. I think these particular TSA agents might have been the biggest assholes I’ve encountered within the TSA, which is saying something, but we made it through with plenty of time. After that it was just getting settled in and waiting on our plane (we were flying Icelandair).

Eventually our plane made it in and we got boarded just a little behind schedule. What was nice about the layout of our plane is that it was 2-3-2 rather than the 2-4-2 (or 3-5-3) of the other international flights I’ve been on. So SB and I were able to secure a “2” for ourselves – and despite having 4 fat suitcases we were just backpack travelers on the plane itself, so despite the smaller-than-Murka’ overhead bins that European airlines have we had plenty of room for ourselves.

We had an overnight flight, which is common for a lot of international flights where you are going forward in time.

It was a pretty uneventful flight. Icelandair doesn’t provide much in the way of amenities, but we knew that in advance. As is normal I slept like crap, but I do think I at least slept for like 1 hour or something, which is more than I’ve been able to say in the past. As we got to closer to Iceland it was cloudy (this was not a surprise) but once we got through the cloud cover we got our first glimpse of our new home!

Once landed we began a.. let’s call it “eventful” stay at the Keflavík International Airport. First, one of our suitcases got one of the front pockets ripped off it. Fortunately I’ve learned to anticipate that the airline will destroy your luggage, so I pack them accordingly. So we had to go over to the desk and deal with that (and we are now down a suitcase). Oddly enough the suitcase that got damaged was the replacement for another suitcase that had gotten damaged.

From there we proceeded through customs, which was the bit of good news for the day, as customs was uh.. non-existent. You legitimately just walk down a hallway with green lights and that’s it. You have to opt-in to customs via pressing a red button. We did not press the button.

Things went south again after that, as Avis didn’t have our rental car that we’d uh, you know, reserved in advance. We ended up waiting like 2 hours for it, only to learn that the incompetent morons at the service counter were giving cars out to people out of order. So there were people who had been there for over 3 hours waiting on a car, only to have their car given away to someone who just showed up. It was a shit show. However, thanks to an justifiably aggressive SB we finally got our car (which had a huge dent in the roof). Sadly we forgot to name our car in all the craziness of the day! However, the silver lining of the delay was that we got to have some coffee and we were long overdue for coffee.

After that we finally made it out of the airport and we on our way to Reykjavik!

The sun even sort of came out for us, but then it started raining (a pattern which has continued to this day). The drive up from Keflavík to Reykjavík is about 50km [I just used metric, u mad my fellow amerifats?] and takes you through a massive-ass lava field (as well as near the famous Blue Lagoon), so it didn’t take us long to get into some very Icelandic landscapes.

Eventually we made our way into Reykjavík and found our way to the University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands). There we got bounced around a bit as we tried to figure out where the heck we were supposed to go to get our apartment keys, but we figured it out. Once we made it to our apartment one of the first things we noticed was that we had a big construction site right across the street from us. I wasn’t sure about that at first, but it turns out that the construction site has provided us with a lot of entertainment and hasn’t really bothered us. In fact I might make a post just about the construction site at some point in the future.

Also, if it wasn’t obvious – we didn’t have anything other than what was in our suitcases. So we basically had nothing insofar as apartment items go. However, we ended up getting really lucky when we did some exploration of our building. We quickly found a table, a chair, a smaller table, a floor table, and stool. We cabbaged onto all of them really quickly. [We later ended up finding a bathroom rack, another small table, some drawers, a colander, and patio chairs – I might be the only recent HLS grad who is now dumpster diving.]

We didn’t really know what we’d end up using any of that stuff for at that time, but it felt like we should take it. For reference this is what our bedroom looked like at the time – yep, no bed.

So in addition to all the other craziness (plus 1 hour of sleep) we had to go out into the world to find some stuff so we could, you know, actually live in our apartment. Fortunately SB had the foresight to keep our rental car for two days (yay SB!). So the very first place we went was none other than mah’ fukin’ IKEA.

Now, if you are an ameritard like me, you probably have no concept of just how FREAKING HUGE the IKEAs are over here. HOLY SHIT. A Super Walmart is like a bodega compared to the IKEA here. IKEA is literally a city of a housewares. Need a day-care for your kids while you shop? Check. Want to grab lunch while you shop? Check. Want to grab a beer before you decide what kind of toilet you want to install? IKEA has you covered. They also have little bitty bathrooms inside the larger bathrooms.

Actually the rooms-within-rooms seems to be a thing for bathrooms here. For instance this is one of the bathrooms at the school.

I could probably write a whole post about the bathrooms, but that would be kind of weird.

So, after eating lunch at IKEA (which was really good) we entered the gawd-dayum labyrinth of the store and eventually stumbled across ENTIRE HOUSES.

My mind was blown. There’s like.. houses, and houses within houses, and warehouses, and magical cart elevators. It’s a land of mystery and wonder and it’s also haunted by the souls of long-dead wallets.

After picking up as much as our car could hold (literally) we went and got some food to stick in the cracks since we didn’t have any of that either. The first place we went grocery shopping was a place called Víðir, though the next day we went to Nettó, before finally settling on Bónus – mostly because it’s the closest to us and cheap, but actually because their mascot is a pig.

Anyways, back to that first day, when we got home we realized that the people who live below us also have a dinosaur!

In our current apartment we have people below us, above us, and on both sides of us. I was not enthused about that to say the least. However, like seemingly all buildings in Iceland, our building is made almost entirely of concrete and steel. So the noise isn’t too bad – except on weekends, holy f*cking God the parties – but I’ll bitch about that at some point in the future, I promise.

One of the big things we got at IKEA that first day was a “bed.” I say “bed” because it was really just a mattress pad (which cost about what a mattress would in the U.S.) – but it was a nice mattress pad. So we were able to get a decent night’s sleep that first night after all! We were worried that we were going to end up sleeping on the damn concrete, but fortunately we avoided that. When we left Boston we had to sleep on our hardwood floor that last night, and that sucked.

The next day we woke up way later than planned, mostly because of jet lag – but also because of sheer exhaustion. The good news was that we still had our car until something like 16:00 and we were dropping it off at the domestic airport (which is like.. right next to us) as opposed to the international airport. So despite being behind schedule we made our way back to IKEA-opolis for more food and also more stuff. New acquisitions included more padding for the “bed” and also a desk chair for me, which Tristen insisted on putting together himself.

That is to say, Tristen sat in the box and gave orders.

It was that same day (I think) that Pigsten formally took control of the construction site. Like I said, we’ve been quite involved with the construction site.

After we parted ways with our car we had to switch over to on-foot mode. One thing we’ve realized about Iceland is that despite being “European” it’s a very car-centric country. We were not expecting that in Reykjavík, but it’s what we got. If it wasn’t obvious we can’t afford a car. In fact two of the Icelanders that SB got put in contact with told us that not having a car was “definitely committing to a certain way of life” in Iceland – and I have to say I agree with them. It’s definitely more difficult here than it was in Boston, which is odd. I was honestly expecting Copenhagen-tier public transit, but I think it was being a stupood ferner’ in my expectations.

Anyways, sans car you have your feet and you have the (comparatively expensive) buses (Strætó). We opted for our feetses – in fact as of my typing this I’ve yet to actually use Strætó, though SB has. The plus side to being a pedestrian is that you get a better sense of your surroundings during your exploration – and explore we did! We started with our new campus, which isn’t really that big or that spectacular, but is still worth exploring.

We then started plotting where we would be going for groceries, since you know, starving is bad. This led us to a nearby park and pond area, known as Tjörnin, which is gorgeous and very European.

The first day we cut across the middle, but we realized very quickly that the wind (o gawd the wind) was pretty extreme on that route. We also later found that we were going out of our way, so now we cross around the edges which is still windy as hell but a little more on the sixth-layer of hell side, rather than the seventh.

We made our way to Bónus which, as mentioned, has become our chief grocery store. Pig is a pretty big fan of Bónus, one can only wonder why.

Another interesting thing about Bónus is that it’s in a part of Reykjavík which has a ton of embassies (including the U.S.), so there’s lots of stuff like Mr. German Bear.

Another area that our explorations took us to during those first few days was Laugavegur, a street in downtown Reykjavík which has just about everything under the sun (except apparently beer huggies, much to my dismay). Laugavegur is also home to a ton of tourist stuff, including loads of shops decked to the brim with Puffins!

It’s an interesting and generally expensive street. It’s not someplace we’re likely to frequent, though I did end up getting my rain-jacket (a 110% must have) used in a thrift shop on Laugavegur after I realized that new jackets were like $500-600 here.

Those first few days were very busy. Not only as we scrambled to get settled into our apartment, but also as we scrambled to figure out things like Icelandic Social Security Numbers (kennitala), bank accounts, school accounts, how to pay rent, how to get internet, and so on and so forth. I’ll spare you all the details because the TL;DR is that all of that was a massive freaking headache that ended up taking over a month to get settled. Also, you really can’t do anything resident-oriented until you have your kennitala, so that was fun. So the first bit we were here was a bit of a blur as it seemed like we would wake up and then before we knew it the sun was going down.

And no, that wasn’t because we didn’t have much daylight. In fact at that time we were still rocking quite a bit of sunlight! Now – not so much (or sunshine in general, not much of that either).

However, one cool thing that we were able to participate in shortly after we arrived was the Reykjavík Culture Night. This culture festival is actually much more than a “night” – I’d say weekend is more accurate, and it’s also huge. Like, they essentially shut down the entire city center (and various other areas) for a massive festival that features all sorts of events, the vast majority of which are totally free!

Now, while SB and I did get to take in a lot of Icelandic culture, we started off by doing the most American thing possible – ignoring all that and going straight to the U.S. Embassy. Yes, the U.S. Embassy was holding it’s own free event for the public, which involved such things as country music (adeptly performed by an Icelandic cover band), Coca Cola, Fanta, Coffee, and.. Krispy Kreme donuts.

Literal mountains of donuts – God Bless America.

They also had some airlines there and you could enter contests to win a trip to the U.S. – SB and I did not enter for obvious reasons. It was also kind of funny, those Krispy Kremes went like wildfire and if it’s anything we Murkans’ know well it’s reckless natural resource mismanagement to the point of yearly record-breaking wildfires! Donuts are apparently the language of life. I find myself agreeing.

While I’d be lying if I said we really didn’t go for the free donuts, neither of us had actually been in an embassy before. We figured it might be a good idea to know where this one was anyways, so that was sort of our side excuse for going. Pigsten decided to come along for the adventure and ended up finding a garden/rock garden in the “backyard” of the embassy, which he really enjoyed as it seemed a lot like “dinosaur times.”

After we were done at the embassy SB led us to a flee-market which had advertised free waffles (because why settle for donuts when you can have donuts and waffles). It turned out that the flee-market wasn’t really much of a market (it was bitties) but they did deliver on the free waffles. It was here that we discovered that 1) Icelandic waffles are awesome and 2) Rhubarb jam on waffles is awesome.

We enjoyed our waffles in the shadow of the German Embassy, which is interestingly enough attached to the United Kingdom’s Embassy (I wonder how Brexit went down in that office).

After that we took off in search of more cultural events. This was the first time we just took to the streets and kind of wandered around aimlessly, which I’ve found is one of the best ways to discover a city.

We even encountered a few trolls on our adventures!

Eventually we found ourselves on Skólavörðustígur (such a nice simple street name) which leads up to one of Reykjavík’s more prominent attractions, Hallgrímskirkja.

Even more awesome is that during the culture festival the Icelandic choir was doing free shows, complete with the accompaniment of the MASSIVE organ which is 15 meters (49 ft) tall and weighs 25 metric tons (no shit).

SB and I stayed for a bit and got to hear the choir, the organ, and then the organ + choir. We couldn’t the vast majority of the lyrics of course, though by the end we were picking out a few words and we were able to follow along in our hymn books.

After a bit we left the tranquility of the church and ventured of to slight more… violent.. past-times (much to Tristen’s pleasure).

Yes, sometime over the past day or so a viking village had sprung up near Tjörnin and it just so happened that we were there to see it. They had a few little stands set up where you could buy handmade stuff (which we quickly realized was way out of our price range) but even if you didn’t want to spend money you could always play with the swords and shields. Pigsten obliged.

We knew that there was going to be some sort of conflict – or at least that is what our really bad attempt at translating the festival’s program had told us. Turns out we were right. After we had spent some time in the village some viking warriors started gathering in the field right next to it.

Now, everything they were saying was in Icelandic – so we had no idea what was actually being said. However, the general plot was fairly easy to follow. There was some sort of dispute between two clans, and then a woman and her guard (?) showed up and things went to shit fast. Shortly after she arrived the talking stopped and then everyone started killing each other.

Just an ordinary day in 930 Iceland.

Eventually one side was victorious.

…and then they proceeded to kill the woman with an axe. Still not sure whose side she was actually on, but based on the fact that they took their time when executing her I’m guessing not the victors.

However, in a bit of twist (complete with some comedic effect that you needn’t know Icelandic to follow) the two final warriors betrayed each other and one of them killed the other. Of course everyone being dead was kind of boring, so he invoked a chant to Odin (that the audience got to participate in) to revive everyone. So then everyone came back to life, only to slaughter each other again. It was pretty funny.

Then at the end after their closing bows all the actors charged at the audience which generated a few funny results (SB might have ran away 😛 ).

I don’t think Tristen slept that night he was so jived up.

After the festival we started transitioning into “normal life” mode, which meant trying to figure out a bunch of stuff for the quickly approaching semester, as well as more mundane day-to-day life stuff, like how to recycle.

Look at how easy these instructions are!

Recycling isn’t single-stream here, which was a bit of a pain for SB and I as we had been hugely spoiled by our three years in Cambridge.

I don’t know if it was the stress of trying to do simple things like open a bank account or learn where the heck you were supposed to return your bottles for the deposit (too far away, turns out) but one day we made a semi-spontaneous decision to hop on one of the very last Puffin tours of the year. While Puffins are more common elsewhere in Iceland (from late April until mid August) there are still a few Puffin islands out in Reykjavík’s harbor (Kollafjörður). Normally the Puffins would have been gone by the time we went on the tour, but some of them had apparently stayed a little later this year (they go out to sea from mid August until Spring, like literally they live out at sea). So we took advantage of the tardy Puffins and booked a last-minute tour. This was also our first time talking to the Old Harbor area in Reykjavík (a lot of tours depart from here).

Since it was very late in the season we got take one of the smaller boats as our group was quite small, maybe 10 people in total.

The nice thing about the smaller boat is that you can get closer to the Puffin islands, not only because of the draft but also because there is less noise and the Puffins aren’t as likely to fly away. There are two principal islands (Akurey and Lundey) that the Puffins in this area live on, and which one you go to is entirely dependent on the Puffins themselves as well as the ocean. For our trip we went to Akurey, which was actually the one I was hoping for. One the way out we got some awesome views of the surrounding area.

Before too long the Puffin kingdom was in sight.

Eventually we made our way right up to it and lo’ and behold, Puffins! 😀 😀 😀

However then something downright shitty happened. We found out – right there on the boat with Puffins in sight – that our zoom camera lens was broken. Yep. That was pretty freakin’ awesome. So we didn’t really get any good photos of the Puffins because we couldn’t zoom in on them, and Puffins are TINY. Actually I’d recommend going and reading this post so you can learn more about the most awesome birds in the universe.

So about the best I can offer is this.

Yes there are Puffins in that photo, and no they are not the first birds you see – those are seagulls. However, look closely and you will discover the awesome mini-fatness of the Puffins.

The only clear photo we got of a Puffin really wasn’t that clear, however it was a Puffin in flight and it had me and SB cracking up.

Yep that fat little blob in the corner is a Puffin. Interesting fact, Puffins flap their wings like CRAZY when they fly, probably because they are so awkward and fat. Also when they walk around with their stubby little legs they look like German soldiers.

The boat made its way around the whole Puffin island, so we got to see them doing different things: chillin’, flapping their wings, flying, diving, and floating. There weren’t a ton of them left (during the high season there are thousands spread around the harbor) but there were enough to satisfy me greatly.

Though Puffins generally despise living near humans, these particular islands really aren’t that far off from civilization – here you can see that Reykjavík is only about 3.1km in the distance.

After we’d made a complete revolution of the island we started making our way back to the harbor.

When we came into the harbor we got to pass a bunch of boats and ships of various sizes, Valentino enjoyed that almost almost as much as he enjoyed the Puffins.

And by enjoy I mean “eat,” as he ate one despite our best attempts to stop him. He is a Polar Bear after all I suppose.

Upon reentry we also got nice view of Harpa, which is Reykjavík’s famous concert hall and conference center. It’s also apparently a major tourist attraction but we haven’t been there yet. There is a conference coming up (or probably that already happened as of this getting posted) that SB and I might go to that is going to be in Harpa though.

The harbor (both in-port and further out) had a ton of jellyfish, some of them were huge! We got a pretty good picture of one who was chillaxin’ near the docks when we got off the boat.

After our exciting (but chilly!) Puffin adventure we decided to go get a snack and some coffee at a nearby cafe. I tried coffee with a lime in it, which sounded weird but turned out to be really yummy. Valentino was also a fan.

From there we headed to a different Bónus in the Grandi harbor area, which we soon found out was way too far away from our apartment to carry a bunch of heavy groceries, a mistake which we haven’t made since.

That evening, or somewhere around in there, was when Tristen decided that he liked to “bop” us with his “bopper” stick, which in actuality was the cardboard tube from the center of the rolled-up rug we had bought at IKEA.

Sadly the “bopper” has since been broken, but we got a lot of “bopping” out of it before it “bopped” itself.

Aside from the chronic bopping our apartment life has mostly assumed a fairly normal flow. The nice thing about that is that it gives us a chance to start planning some of our future adventures. One of the biggest reasons we came here was to do some exploring (arguably definitely even more so than school itself) so naturally we already have plans to get outside of the city. To help us visualize our potential Icelandic adventures SB even picked up an old-fashioned “Uppdráttr Íslands” or Icelandic map.

Right now it and a fishy clock are the only thing we’ve put up on our walls.

The fact that the walls are concrete doesn’t make hanging things very easy and the little wooden strips they put up to hang things from are too high to be very useful.

We really don’t have a lot of “stuff” in general right now. A lot of that is intentional, but some of it is just because things are so expensive here. Case in point: 1 roll of duct-tape will run you about $19. Lest you think we should just order stuff online, well, heh that isn’t really an option and even where it is you then get to pay a ridiculous amount in custom fees (usually about 50% of what you paid) in addition to shipping. However, one little “hack” is to order stuff from China. Iceland and China have a free trade agreement (the first such agreement between China and a European country). This removes the fees from anything you order from China so long as it comes directly from China. We’ve capitalized on this by ordering several things from China on Ebay. I mean the drawback is that they will arrive sometime between 2 weeks and 2 months later (or never, as in the case of one item), but if you aren’t in a hurry you can literally get things for 1/8 or 1/10th the price of what they cost to buy domestically.

One downside beyond the shipping speed is the fact that you have to go to the Post Office (Íslandspóstur) to get your packages. The delivery system is.. odd here. Basically there is no de facto “home delivery” for packages – you need to pay extra for that. Also, if you get a package they leave you a slip – entirely in Icelandic – which tells you how to get said package. The first time we got a package was a bit of an adventure but we’ve got it figured out now. They also don’t operate on weekends, but that’s not surprising really as a lot of stuff has limited hours here on weekends.

The good news is that our closest Post Office isn’t that far – about a 20 minute walk. It’s also in a cool area of town. For instance the route goes along the western edge of Tjörnin – seen here on a much more typical day weather-wise.

It’s just around the corner from Austurvöllur, a public square which itself sits right out in front of Alþingi (Iceland’s parliament).

Then just south of that is Ráðhús Reykjavíkur (Reykjavík’s City Hall) which sits at the northern end of Tjörnin.

So all in all at least it’s a scenic walk, though the scenery doesn’t do a whole lot for you when the wind is blowing you around and it’s pouring rain. Yes I do believe the rain here will have to get its own post, or at least an extensive mention, at some point – it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before and I’ve lived in some windy-ass places.

The good news about the wind, the rain, and the cold is that we have an awesome heating system that we can ACTUALLY CONTROL. We had essentially zero control over our heating in Cambridge which meant that sometimes it was roasting, but more often than not it was freaking cold. We have no A/C here, but you’d be pretty dumb to not realize why we don’t need it. Our heating is boss though. We’ve also found plenty of treats to keep us fat, such as some (surprisingly affordable) ice cream Pig found for us at Bónus.

We’ve also found our new favorite soda, which is Appelsín (and its Tappelsín variant) – an orange soda that is way better than normal orange soda.

It’s proven to be quite popular in the Taco household, probably too popular. That said, not everything has been a hit. For instance, licorice ice cream turned out to be a less exciting than it sounded.

It looked like I was eating black clay, and honestly I may well have been. Still glad I tried it though. SB’s far more normal and less exciting ice cream can be seen in the background.

In fact we’ve been trying loads of new stuff, which is half the fun of living in a new place! Our diet has MASSIVELY shifted from what it once was, largely due to simple availability of things, but also because of massive price differences. For example, chicken is worth its weight in gold, but eggs are affordable. Hamburger is expensive as shit, but fish is more affordable. Stuff like that. Hotdogs are also really big here and since they are cheap I’ve eaten more hotdogs since August than I had in the previous 5 years. The good news about that is their hotdogs are delicious and actually made of meat. All of our cereal has changed too, and while SB has gravitated towards her muesli, the Boys are big fans of “Alpha Bites.”

Tristen because of the word “alpha” (i.e. manlies) and Valentino because they have a bear as their mascot (and as the box!). Pig and Pigsten I think like them for the actual eating. SB and I like them because they came with a bunch of magnets which we were able to put on our (small) refrigerator and make a story with!

SB and I like telling stories almost as much as we like collecting magnets – so that was a win-win situation (plus we got food).

Anyways, I think I’ve covered a good bit of what getting to Iceland was like as well as what living here has at least started like. If you noticed I left out pretty much everything about actually going to school and what that’s like (hint: very different), but I’ll make another post which covers some more day-to-day stuff at some point in the future. There’s also been quite a few things that have happened since this “intro” period was over, some of it frustrating, some of it exciting.

The next post in this six-post-blast I’ve been writing will focus on one of those exciting bits, which just so happens to be SB and I’s first trip outside of the city and into the Icelandic countryside!

It’s time for another “move” story, this one is more of a pit stop than a true move (no, not that kind of pit stop). So gather round the fire, or Himalayan salt lamp, either or – and prepare for a story!

After graduation, a lot of last-minute Boston adventures, and a bar exam trip to Albuquerque, SB and I’s time in Beantown had come to a close. Now, in an ideal world I would have had a little more time to decompress after the bar exam, but alas, this is not an ideal world. So I ended up only having one day between the end of the most important exam in recent memory and needing to GTFO of my dwelling. As such, while most of my former classmates were now gallivanting off around the world on 1+ month long bar trips, I went home and got started on this.

Actually, now that I look at it, that was the start of it. It got much worse from there. As someone who has moved several times in their life I find that you always have way more crap than you realize when it comes time to move. Even for the relativity small amount of stuff that SB and I own it really adds up – and we even spent like 1.5 months selling stuff! The good news is that even though we felt like we had a lot for us – we didn’t really have that much in comparison to some people. So, in a very familiar series of events we found ourselves renting another box truck to retrace our steps back to the homeland. The good news there is that we got really lucky insofar as weather was concerned on the day we went and picked up our Penske – it was neither raining nor overly hot, two common things in summertime Boston.

Though we had stuck with Penske we were using a different location this time around, so rather than having to get up to Medford we only had to cross the Charles down into Allston. There, after some paperwork, we met Lucy!

Lucy was the exact same kind of Penske as Lillian was and she also had Indiana plates! This lead SB and I to go on a knowledge adventure to figure out why so many Penske trucks have Indiana plates. The answer is fairly straightforward though easy to overlook.

After picking up Lillian, SB – yes SB – drove us back up to our apartment. In a sort of “full circle” moment we crossed over the same bridge entering Cambridge as we had three years ago.

We then got Lucy all settled in front of our apartment in one of the spaces we had paid for. Yep, you have to pay to reserve a space for a moving truck, but its so so worth it.

From there it was getting down to the bloody business of the day – literally for Little Friend. Sadly Little Friend is just so dang big that he won’t vertically fit into the back of a moving truck. However, last time with Lillian I had made the mistake of putting Little Friend near the back which meant he also had to be under the rear door. That in turn required him to be even shorter, so this time I put him all the way in the front of the back of the truck which meant I didn’t have to chop off quite as much.

Despite looking rather stylish with his new hair cut he was not pleased with me. We’ve been through this a few times now, so while I’m getting better at not getting the ever-loving shit poked out of me, Little Friend still got in a few good jabs. After getting him all cropped down I had to carry him down 4 floors to the street, which was honestly one of the more difficult parts of the entire move. He is feckin’ heavy and also really tall and awkward. However, we prevailed and eventually he found his way to the front of Lucy’s bed – which at the very least he seemed to enjoy as he caused no further issues for the entire trip.

Little Friend was actually the third thing we had loaded, fourth if you count the box springs and mattress as two different things – which for the purposes of being carrying down cramped stairways they most certainly are. Our stairs were ehm… not really suited for moving. In fact when we last did this – that time the direction was up – we vowed never to do it again. I guess we sort of kept our word because we weren’t technically moving anything up – which would have cost us $500 for help 3 years ago. However, even though the direction was down it was still a lot of work. The good news is that we had sold a lot of our stuff, namely behemoth objects like Philip, so while those were difficult to get down they were at least done individually over the course of 1.5 months, rather than all in one day. HOWEVER, as mentioned, you always have more than you think you will, so what we anticipated as being an easy move ended up being much more stressful and rushed than expected.

If you’ve moved with tight deadlines before you’ll probably know that “oh my god the apartment must be spontaneously generating objects” feeling that comes when the rooms just seem to refuse to empty and you were supposed to have left an hour ago. We had that moment, for sure. As a dig to SB I blame her for inadequate preparation because I was taking the bar exam. 😛

Still, we managed, as we always do in one way or another and despite being like 1.5 hours behind schedule it was soon time for me to take the final walk through.

I always think it’s kind of interesting how different your home looks once it’s empty. It’s like you get so used to seeing it with all your stuff in it that by the time you strip everything out it doesn’t even really feel like the same place you’ve spent the past few (or many) years. In the case of our Cambridge apartment I had also forgotten just how much things echoed without the rug (which had been with us for 7 years) and all the furniture.

Traditionally I’m always the one to do the last walk-through of SB and I’s apartments. We’ve had 5 apartments so far and I think I’ve been the one to close the door on all of them. Not sure there is really any reason for that other than that if we’ve missed some minor detail that I’d probably be the one to notice it. It’s always kind of a somber experience – even when you’re most definitely ready to move on. I’ve had places I was very glad to leave, yet that final “goodbye” always feels kind of discontenting. I suppose it’s just the classic specter of change rearing its ominous head.

After heading down the stairs one last time – I joined SB and everyone else in Lucy. One thing we were doing differently this time around was that SB actually started the trip in the Captain’s chair! I started off as the assistant co-pilot to get us out of the city. I say “assistant” because the primary co-pilot was naturally a certain dinosaur (who happened to sit on the snacks in order to ration them as he saw fit).

Once we were out of the metro area and into Connecticut we stopped for gas and I took over as pilot. Earlier I said we were “retracing” our steps and I meant that more metaphorically than literally. Not only was out route more “south” this time, we weren’t even going to the same destination. However, the general state-to-state route was the same, though this time we managed to avoid a lot of the tolls we had hit previously. We had worried that we were going to get hit with a bunch of electronic polls on the Massachusetts Turnpike (which had recently been totally converted to e-polls) but fortunately that didn’t happen.

The start of our trip had clear blue skies and the Boys (and SB) were well-behaved.

Lucy also did her part, I think she was ready to get back to her home-state!

The first night we were treated to a really nice sunset as we neared our destination.

Our stop? Alaska! No, not that Alaska – Alaska, Pennsylvania. Yes, it exists. The hotel we stayed at happened to be right next to a McDonalds, so we had McDonalds for a late dinner and then the next morning the Boys creepered out the window at all the McDonald’s people (to their dismay we ate crappy hotel breakfast food, because it was free).

After that we were back on the road.

This time around we were doing the trip with only one overnight stop, whereas last time we did two. A lot of that had to do with logistics. On our way out we knew we had to unload and return Lillian all in the same day, so we stopped just outside of the Boston metro on the second day so that we could get into town earlier in the morning. On this “return” trip we knew we could just unload and park Lucy at FIL and MIL’s house, which meant a later arrival wasn’t a big deal. Now, that said we still had some Boys who were anxious to burn up the road.

While Tristen liking truck travel isn’t a surprise, Pig and Valentino are fans as well.

The Boys move around the cab a lot. They tend to alternate between the dashboard, SB’s lap, my lap – or, most frequently – right on top of all the food. Animal instincts and all that.

The trip went really well until we got to Indiana. Once we got to Indiana it started pouring rain, I found out I didn’t get a job, and traffic got backed up. Fortunately thanks to SB’s phone (Hail Google) we were able to pass up the worst of the traffic, though even our Google Overlords couldn’t do much about issues 1 and 2. Still, by the time we actually got to our destination the skies had mostly cleared up. It was also extremely humid and after a stint in New Mexico I was feeling that humidity hard. Lucy, however, was ready to take a load off (literally) so we ended up using the fact that we had made good time to our advantage and got everything unloaded that first night!

Little did we know that unloading Lucy would be the easiest part of the whole affair. The worst part was yet to come and involved organizing our entire life over the next week – a job which SB and I agree probably amounted to at least 40-50 hours (and it’s not like that is all we were doing). Of course not all was busy-work, one of the best parts about being “home” is getting to see family! The Boys made quick work of that!

The only person missing at first was Meem, as she had went straight from New Mexico out to California for work, but she caught up with us eventually!

We did have to part ways with Lucy, which like Lillian was kind of a bummer but I always like when we are actually bringing them home (kind of like Beckett!) and Lucy had a lot of brothers and sisters waiting for her!

Also, in case you were wondering – all of our plant buddies (Little Friend, Three Amigos, Rosita, Bonsai Buddy Jr.) made the trip just fine. Some of them had some “post-move depression” but MIL moved them to a sunnier spot and now they are fine! Little Friend for his part was a trooper as usual, considering we’d chopped off parts of his body and all. As a reward all of his buddies got cleaned for the first time in ages.

One does not simply mess with Little Friend’s friends.

But yes, despite the craziness of unpacking, organizing, downsizing, moving, and repacking all of our worldly possessions we found plenty of time to see family. We got to spend time with Meem, Daryl 1, DBH, FIL, MIL, BIL, my Dad, Stepmom, and Daryl 2 – as well as some extended family. I also got to see the only two non-family friends I really have anymore. That was pretty awesome since I hadn’t got to see them in over 1.5 years (largely due to a very late train). We went and saw Spider-Man: Homecoming, which was better than expected. Meem, Daryl 1, and I also went to see the Dark Tower later on, and it was eh.. not better than expected.

In addition to food, movies, and booze we did get to spend some time in the great outdoors with my Dad, Stepmom, and Daryl 2. One nice day we all headed to Spring Mill State Park – staple of many an Indiana elementary school field-trip. By my (probably wrong) calculations it had been at least 15 years since I’d been there, possibly longer.

It was a great day to visit. It was busy but really the only spot that was “crowded” was the store which sells candy (go figure).

For those of you who have no idea what Spring Mill’s schtick is (and I’m not sure why you would), it’s basically a recreated settler village (using authentic but mostly relocated structures) which has been built around an authentic and not-relocated watermill.Like most settler villages it also has reenactments complete with actors and various things up for purchase, to make yourself, or watch being made. When I was younger I was a big fan of the blacksmith, I always liked the smell.

If you look at the little blue buildings in the next photo, the one on right is where the candy is. It was swarming with people when we first got there and by the time we made it inside the candy was slim-pickings, though make no mistake I still got candy. 😀

A short drive away from the village is a cave (Donaldson Cave) that I’m pretty sure I’ve never been to – or if I have I definitely don’t remember it.

I really wanted to explore a bit, but as the cave is wet I most definitely did not have the right kind of shoes. I like my Sauconys (even if I have to put guerilla tape in them to get my big toe from busting through them) but they are in no way shape or form good wet environment shoes. They can handle long hikes in dry weather just fine, but wetness? No so much.

On our way back from Spring Mill we passed a Sinclair gas station, something I didn’t even know existed in Indiana! I have a special affinity for Sinclair stations.

In fact, so strong was that affinity that we picked up a special friend for Meem! But we’ll introduce him in a moment.

The next stop on the agenda was another thing I hadn’t been to in a long time – and something to which SB had never been to – a demolition derby! Yep, I’m busting out the Wikipedia article on that one because there are people I’ve met who have no idea what a demo is, so perhaps someone reading this blog with benefit from some dango’ knowledge.

The demo was, as expected, a lot of fun. We all really enjoyed ourselves – and I’m not just saying that because of the festival food. One thing I had forgotten about demos – or maybe I was too young to fully register it before – is how funny they are. Yes, I get how it can be frustrating for the drivers themselves, but for a totally unaffiliated audience member such as myself some of the shit that went down was outright hilarious. SB and I were especially fond of the purple and white car on the right in the photo below.

While he sadly did not win, you gotta give the dude props as he was the third from last left standing and as you can see there was essentially nothing left of his car by the time it was over.

That night we ended up staying out pretty late due to the demo so we weren’t able to give Meem her new friend right away. However, to be totally honest I think Tristen was totally ok with that because the new friend was Sinclair, the Brontosaurus!

While Tristen has a quite “manries” exterior, those who know him will not be surprised that he was very worried about Sinclair being stuck in the bag and had to make sure that he could breathe. Sinclair came through just fine, dinosaurs are tough after all! Meem got to meet Sinclair the next day and everyone took to Sinclair right away. It’s not often that we introduce new “friends” to our family and we are very picky about our company, but Sinclair fit in just fine!

Pigsten got to share some rock stories with Grandma Meem and swap some rocks for their collections. Pigsten and Grandma “Reem” are big fans of rocks and minerals.

Pigsten has a rock collection that literally spans 5,500 miles – and that’s just in a straight line, I could only imagine what his coverage would be if you calculated the square miles.

On the topic of friends, Sinclair wasn’t the only “new” friend we made, however I put “new” in scare quotes because the two other additions weren’t really new at all. In fact, they were quite old!

One of the many things we did while we were “home” was to consolidate a bunch of our stuff – which meant traveling to the different houses and going through things. During this massive excavation I uncovered a bunch of old stuffed animals and of all of them we were drawn to two little itty-bitty bears, a polar bear from Meem’s and a brown bear from my Dad’s. I think choosing the smallest things was the compromise between baby Taco not wanting to get rid of his stuffed animals and adult Taco who realizes they have no more space. So our silly few increased by two! Hey that rhymes, neato.

Towards the end of our time at “home” we went out to eat with a bunch of the family, which turned into SB and I drinking way too much both there and later at the local bar. SB got it much worse than I did and so the next day she spent pretty much the whole day recovering. 🙂

I felt pretty much fine the next day after getting some water in me, so I got to go spend some time with my Dad and see his cabin. It’s a luxurious cabin mansion set on a 3,000 acre estate, inclusive of a large swath of top-tier riverfront property. That might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s still a cabin and I still like it. Plus it’s nice to get out an see some of the areas that I don’t really get to see anymore.

That it was such a nice day made it all the more pleasant.

That evening, which was our last in town, we spent the majority of our time at Meem’s house and we all made dinner with Tristen carefully watching over the ricken’ to make sure it was to his standards (things must be perfect for Grandma Reem after all).

All the Boys played with my (and later Daryl 1’s) old car mat, which has seen some shit in its day.

It was one of the many things we re-discovered when we were going through the (literal) piles of stuff we had gathered to sort/discard/etc.

When it was getting close to bedtime we headed down to FIL and MIL’s since they were the wants trudging us all the way up to Chicago the next day since flights were far more affordable out of there. At that point Valentino formally named our two newest buddies, they are “Roland” and “Jake” which will make sense to you if you’ve read one of the best book series of all time (just forget about the movie, pretend it doesn’t exist). Roland and Jake did not come to Iceland with us, they stayed behind with all our other buddies (Old Bear Buddies, Squirrel Buddies, Sebastian & Serendipity, Pig Buddies, etc.) because they needed a bit of stability after emerging from like 2+ decades worth of hibernation. Valentino made sure they were all snuggled up before we left.

Pigsten photo-bomb with the new friends!

The next day was pretty much defined by the car ride up to Chicago. It was a full car, between FIL, MIL, SB, Me, the Boys and four suitcases plus an assortment of backpacks. Lest you judge me over being a fat Murkan traveler, those suitcases were our entire life for the year to come. We didn’t even up shipping anything except for a desktop computer (and just that, no monitor or accessories) because shipping + customs was so expensive. Basically it was WAY cheaper to pay extra for luggage then suffer moving it all around for a day or so than it was to use other methods. Believe it or not Iceland is not easy to get stuff too.. who would’a thunk’ it?

Anyways, the arrival in Chicago is a good starting point for next post, whereas it’s a good ending point for this post.

All in all, SB and I really enjoyed our trip home and our time home. Yes, it was hectic – and yes, it was stressful at times, but on the whole it was mostly nice to get a chance to see the family (and finally some friends!). I’m also thankful that Lucy gave us zero issues whatsoever (Penske 4 lyfe) and that FIL and MIL are allowing us to store most of our stuff at their house while we are going, something which saved us an undetermined number of months worth of storage fees!

What’s kind of crazy is that despite how busy all that seems, it was actually a “pit stop” for us in the sense that it came between two very big events, with the Bar Exam + Leaving Boston on one side, and the whole Move to Iceland bit on the other.

Just what did that next step look like? Well, that’s a post for another day. 🙂

So, for those of you who might have been wondering, yep I’m still alive.

This has been a doozy of a hiatus here on Dinosaur Bear, though be fair I did sort of say that was going to happen. In fact I think this might have been my longest break from blogging since.. June 2014. Anyways, as is normal for me this doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve been sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Quite the contrary in fact! Indeed, I’ve gone through a few major life shifts since we last met.

But here is the good news, I’ve actually got some posts queued up about those shifts. Check it out, I have not one, not two, not three, not four, but five posts (six if you count this one). I’m not exactly sure on what the timeline will be for those posts you know.. actually getting posted, but they are here and ready to go. The first one should drop next Monday (the 9th), which just so happens to be the same day as my first Icelandic exam (yeah sarcastic excitement)!

Half the battle has just been coming up with enough time to write the darn things. Well, pictures can also be kind of a pain in the arse when they are spread across multiple devices. Namely because they get all out of chronological order when you combine them (even with sort by date selected) so then you get to go through them at a snail’s pace to sort them all out. Anyways, slight digression there.

Point is, I am here, I am alive, and while I am no longer as easy to reach as I was once was I still plan on keeping the blog alive. I’m not sure exactly what my posting schedule will look like, but that was also sort of in flux before I even moved. Oh, about that, I live in Iceland now (if the exam comment didn’t make that obvious). Like I said, life shifts.

So, at some point in the coming days after this my first post will go up (should be Monday), and then from there the next four will trickle out in some yet-to-be determined fashion. It’s been a fairly large hiatus, yes, but I’ll make up for it by slamming out some posts.

With that said, I’ll get off here and get back to editing a paper I need to turn in this week. Fun stuff that. 🙂

Enjoy the forthcoming posts! In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out the “About Me,” “Who’s Who?” or “Rules of the Blog” pages recently you might take a gander at those as they have been substantively updated – especially the rules since I’ve recently changed my photo format to compressed/lower quality photos on the blog due to storage issues. The plus size is that a post which was once about 465 MB is now only around 25 MB, so that’s definitely a good thing – even if the quality is lower (ask me if you want a high quality version of a photo).

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. enjoy a nice photo of a park near my home. That was back when we still had sunshine.

Welcome to Dinosaur Bear! This is going to be a short post (yes, an actual short post from Taco, believe it or not!). Basically I just wanted to post that I have no idea when I’ll be posting next (lol). Well, actually that isn’t true, but more on that in just a second.

I’m getting ready to go through a bunch of changes. The bar exam, job interview(s?), moving (déjà vu), moving again, starting a post-doc program (in another country), and so on and so forth. There are a lot of unknowns in this process which means that I have no real firm timeline on a lot of things (for instance, as of right now I still don’t have a place to live abroad). As such, I don’t know when I’ll have a time to make another Dinosaur Bear post, but rest assured I’ll definitely be generating content for that post whenever it does come.

In fact, on the day this gets posted I’ll be on my way to take the bar exam, which is effectively the beginning of my “blog blackout” period that could last upwards of a month (or longer). However, have no fear, I can guarantee at least one post in the interim. It’s going to be my “Boston Post-Game” post, which, unsurprisingly, covers pretty much the exact opposite of my “Boston Pre-Game” post from (what seems like) a lifetime ago, and is the third subject I talked about posting here.

That next post (which is a doozy, as it covers everything that happened from New Orleans to me leaving for the bar exam) should drop on August 1st and give you something to chew on until I get around to posting about the bar exam, moving, and really starting what is by most accounts a practically new life.

Anyways, if you still can’t believe that I’d write something this short (e.g. a normal sane-person type of post) then I suggest perusing some of the Dinosaur Bear archives. You can either just do a random search (see here if you are confused by wizardry), or go with some of the following suggestions by some people who appear on the blog regularly. I asked Meem and SB to pick a post they really liked (they both ended up choosing two), whereas I asked the Boys to pick some older posts that they thought didn’t get enough traffic or were just silly. I also tossed in a personal pick which I haven’t referenced in awhile and need to follow up on someday (plus a bonus full of some silliness).

On June 6th, 2012 Dinosaur Bear entered the world with its very first post. Sure, the name has changed twice since then, but the general purpose of the blog remains the same. So, although it’s over a month belated – Happy Birthday Dinosaur Bear!

Why the Danish flag? Well, that’s because in many ways Copenhagen is the birthplace of Dinosaur Bear!

Since last time, I’d mentally decided on the next three posts. First, I wanted to address “5 Years of Dinosaur Bear,” second, I wanted to discuss graduating on a bit more of a personal level, and third, I wanted to talk a little bit what I’ve been doing these past couple of months (aside from studying for the bar). Being a fan of efficiency – and realizing that the topics were closely intertwined – I’ve decided to combine the first two posts into one – this post. The third, on the topic of my busy summer, will come later in July (hopefully).

Let’s start with the topic of Dinosaur Bear being five years old. That’s kind of crazy. I have no data, but my guess is that most blogs are abandoned long before they turn five years old. Similarly, I’d imagine that a fair number of blogs that have been around longer than five years have attempted to monetize themselves. While it’s true that Dinosaur Bear hasn’t been generating content for five straight years (there was a hiatus), it’s never been down for any significant period. I’ve also made no attempt to make money from this blog. Some people have suggested it, but I simply have no desire to do so. This blog, was, is, and likely forever shall be, a story to some future version of myself. I’m not particularly vested in generating traffic, and in fact, I’ve made some posts less attractive to search engines in order to decrease the number of people who find them (a few posts have generated a somewhat incredible number of visitors). This is not to say that you are not welcome here, anyone who might be reading this, but rather that money, plus a large readership, are not the goals of Dinosaur Bear, nor have they ever been.

My guess is that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to guess what they are going to be doing in five years. Sure, some people could, but I doubt most of us can say with much specificity what we’ll be up to in five years (either due to personal choice or plinko). However, I think I’m in one of the higher percentiles of “Are you freaking kidding me?” The person I was five years ago scarcely resembles the person I am today (and not just in good ways, but life seldom gives you a bag of apples without a few rotten ones). I can safely say, that even just five years ago (let alone 10, holy gawd) I would have very likely never have guessed that I’d still be using this blog (thanks again Meem), and I sure as HELL wouldn’t have guessed what I’d have done in those five years that was usual in generating content for it.

But, as someone much more poetic than I once said, “life is odd, with its twists and turns.” Truer words are seldom written (or spoken). As a result, the past five years have, without a doubt, been the most unexpected, craziest, and adventurous of my life. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process. I’ll spare you the 50,000 word metaphysical treatise on what I mean by that, but the gist of it is that I think I’m getting much better at listening to “me, myself, and I” and, consequently, telling the rest of the world to “eat shit.” This isn’t without its drawbacks. I’ve found that I care about far fewer people than I used to, but care about those who are left even more. I’ve also lost a lot of empathy – though in real talk I think law school contributed to that. I’ve learned that what I care passionately about, is not what a lot of people I know care passionately about, and I’ve also learned that I don’t care. While I can completely understand your doubt if you don’t know me personally, if there is one thing I can say about the past five years – particularly the past three – it’s that I’ve spent a lot of time ignoring advice, both well meaning, and ill-informed, and, it’s worked wonderfully for me. This is not to say I’m all-knowing. Oh lawds I am not. I tumble, fall, pout, cry, rage, fail, and fail some more – but in the end I’ve made it, and I’ve “made it” in every single thing that someone told me I couldn’t. You might say I’ve defined myself as an anti-cookie-cutter, and yes, for my fellow anti-cookie-cutters out there, I’m sure you realize that doing this severs a lot of your relationships. It certainly did for me. Maybe I just happened to be surrounded by a larger-than-average contingent of people who don’t understand my desire to be different (or, possibly even more accurately – don’t want to understand), but the end result is that my “sphere” has massively diminished.

And, it took me a long time to realize that – much longer than five years – but I think that is my connection style, and I’ve yet to see any reason why I should should have suppressed it for as long as I did.

How is this relevant to Dinosaur Bear? Well, for one I am Dinosaur Bear. 🙂

But more pertinently, it’s relevant because if you read between the lines of all these 193 posts, you’ll see the growth of the person I now am. And, I guess if you are good at such things, probably even a prediction of the person I will become (and who knows, maybe I’ll be making a “10 Years of Dinosaur Bear” post – stranger things have most certainly happened). This is not to say that every post is philosophical, of course not. In fact, a lot of them are just me whining, and I like to think of myself as an exquisite cry-baby. Others involve nihilistic overtures of a colonoscopy, or such random topics as what kind of scissors I like, not to mention a nearly endless number of beer discussions. But, if you step back, you’ll see Taco – probably a whole lot better that most people ever will. So yes, dear internet stranger, if you follow this blog regularly you probably know more about me than most people who have known me in-person my whole life but who don’t read this blog. But, give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth – and all that. 🙂

This is all to say that I’ve changed, this blog has changed, and likely you’ve changed. I’d like to think that there has been an upward trend, and the good news is that I think Dinosaur Bear supports that hypothesis.

Which brings me to my next point, graduation. It would be hard to distill “law school” from “Dinosaur Bear,” and in fact one could make a very strong argument that Dinosaur Bear was – at least by implication – a law school blog. If it was, I don’t think it is anymore, but perhaps it was. It was most certainly a blog about me complaining about law school (and other such random topics as people needlessly cutting you off in a foot race), but I think if you go read a blog that is really about law school, you’ll see that Dinosaur Bear is not, and was not one. Regardless of what theme Dinosaur Bear adopted (regardless of the author’s intent – a favorite author of mine, Stephen King, speaks to this much more eloquently), I’m now graduated, and can at that little “J.D.” to the end of Taco if I so wish. Taco, Juris Doctor – or is it Taco, Doctor of Jurisprudence? Maybe both. Who knows, I certainly don’t. What I do know, is that I feel categorically, wholly, undisputedly – no different than I did before having the degree. This is odd, because in the past I felt quite a bit after getting a degree, and you’d certainly think that a J.D. from Harvard would give you some feely-feels. At least, I thought it was odd at first. What do I mean by that? Well, that requires an examination of what brought me to law school in the first place. And yeah, don’t worry, I’m not about to write my memoir here – plus there is no concise and tangible answer as to why I came to law school. And that is actually more of an answer to the question than anything of substance.

Confused? Don’t worry, it’s kind of odd and confusing at the same time. The truth is that I didn’t go to law school because I was driven towards it, and law school was not an end in and of itself, but rather a stepping stone to the future, but oddly enough, not a legal future. Just what future? I didn’t know – and still don’t entirely know. Does that motivation bother you? If so, see the paragraphs above. 🙂

Now this doesn’t mean that I haven’t found some purpose beyond a stepping stone. Of course not. If you’ve read this blog for more than a post or two, you’ll know that I’ve actually grown pretty invested in a few things – most of which I was resoundingly told to avoid as being too “nontraditional” – but so far I’m rocking a pretty good success streak. No, what this merely means is that unlike someone who knew they wanted to be a lawyer, or maybe even more specifically knew exactly what kind of lawyer they wanted to be – where law school was a means to that end, for me, law school wasn’t necessarily a means to any particular end, insomuch as it was a chapter in and of itself.

As such, that I don’t feel a whole lot different because of the degree really isn’t that surprising. The fact is that I feel different because of the experiences that occurred as part of law school, almost all of which were extrinsic to the school itself. Further, I’ve refused – and I mean utterly refused to get “off track” while in law school. This might sound totally, impossibly crazy to you, but at Harvard, it’s easier to get a job with a $180,000 salary and $15,000 bonus, than it is to get the kind of job I want which will literally pay 1/4 (at most, possibly less) of that. And that 180k is a starting salary mind you, it goes up each year (so does the bonus). If your initial inclination is to call me an “ungrateful shit” at turning down such an opportunity (that’s an exact quote, by the way) I can’t say I entirely blame you, but it also shows me that you have no real insight into what I meant by “staying on track.” And – that isn’t something I’m going to explain, the answer lies within this blog if you are really curious. But, I will reiterate, the hardest part of law school, or at least my law school, was – in the words of Gold Five, to “Stay on Target.”

But I did. In fact, I knew it would be a challenge – though I didn’t understand just how big of a challenge it would be, as literally everything pushes against you. But, as I knew it would at least be a challenge, I wrote a “manifesto” to myself prior to starting law school. Of course I’m not sure a “manifesto” is the best title for it since I didn’t revisit it for three years. In fact I promptly sealed it away in the bowels of Gmail and intentionally didn’t open it again until after I’d graduated. However, I didn’t forget about it, nor did I forget about its purpose.

And – I have to say, I upheld my charge to myself. For all I didn’t know when I wrote it, I knew enough about myself to set a high bar, and I most certainly did – but I also most certainly surpassed it.

I won’t share the whole manifesto here, it’s decently long, and this is going to be a long post as-is. But I will share a segment of the penultimate line of the manifesto, as it mirrors this post quite prophetically – despite predating it by three years:

“Law is phase in my life, a brief branch in the trail. My reasoning might not make perfect sense to others, but it is my reasoning to make.”

And, true to my desire to not let THE LAW define me. I kept one little piece of pre-law me very close to the chest, and I’d like to share a brief story about that.

Ask most any law student, or law student-to-be, and they’ll say that probably the most exciting moment in the whole process is when you get the acceptance call, e-mail, or letter. In my case, I mostly got calls which were followed by e-mails and/or physical mailings. Regardless of the format, an acceptance is a wonderfully exciting moment if its a school your invested in, and even if you aren’t, its still a nice bit of affirmation. Likewise, rejections are the exact opposite – and I know those just as well. But, returning to the point, that bit of correspondence (be it digital or physical) is like a small little time capsule that forever enshrines what you felt when you got it. Maybe you don’t remember them all, but my guess is that there are at least two that you’ll never forget. I have two, and I chose to attend one of them. With Harvard, the call came first (and if you include my pre-acceptance interview, I kept that a secret for over a month from everyone except SB – which was also fun), but just before Christmas 2013 I received an email which confirmed that the phone call was real and not in my imagination (a more common thought process than you might imagine with places like Harvard and Stanford, or really any school to which your mind is blown that they actually accepted you). The e-mail, which was itself later followed by physical goodies, was mostly administrative – it’s central purpose was just to send me my ID number. But, the email was more than that. It was, right there, a “Victory” sign to me in a lot of ways. However, over time, something strange happened. The e-mail became less of a “Victory” symbol, and more of a reminder – of the person who got that email – of a person who wouldn’t take that e-mail for granted, even when it got old and law school became mundane, frustrating, and – at times – downright unhealthy.

But, for the Taco who opened that email over 3 and a half years ago, that email was a victory. At the time it was a gigantic “fuck you” to people who no longer matter, though in the ensuing months it become more of a testament to my self ability and less a middle-finger to others (though let’s be real, that can be a fun thing to think about). But, the point is, it was awesome, it was unimaginably, incomprehensibly, amazing. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, a victory – a hard earned victory – but an unexpected one nonetheless. Yet, we are fickle creatures. All those feelings would have normally faded, but I wanted to be sure that they didn’t. So I didn’t let them.

I didn’t delete that email. I didn’t archive that email. I left it right there in my inbox. The first email I ever received at my Harvard address.

And it’s still there.

And it will always be there. I will never delete that email. It will always be the little email sitting at the bottom of my inbox. Because I cannot, will not, compromise who I am.

For at the end of the day, I’ve realized that I am Harvard, but Harvard is not me.

And that email, in its own little way, reminds me of that.

And I won’t forget it.

Because to categorize me as Harvard, loses all of my nuances – it typecasts me into a mold that I’ve sadly learned is not that off-base, but the key word there is that. As law school has taught me, the exceptions prove the rule – but there are always exceptions.

So, while I may be Harvard, that’s just one chapter in my story – and, as I alluded to above, I feel though as my story is one that gets better and more fulfilling as the pages turn onward. I had said that Dinosaur Bear supported that hypothesis – so let’s take a step back and look at these past few years together, shall we? To keep the size from ballooning out of the control, I’m only going to sample one thing from every five or ten posts – but of course the ole’ search bar is right over there if you desire more. 🙂

So yes, I’d like to think that things are getting better, a little better all the time. 🙂

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And on that note, I think it’s a good time to wrap up this post.

In parting, I’ll share one final thought.

After graduation Harvard sent out a questionnaire which asked a lot of things about our collective experience at the school, be it academic, social, professional, etc. Unsurprisingly, two of the most prominent questions were, first “Did you enjoy law school?” and, “Knowing what you know now, would you still go to law school?”

I – perhaps with appearance of paradox (or masochism) – answered “No” to the former, and “Yes” to the latter.

In actuality, the answers make perfect sense.

See, I didn’t enjoy the law in law school. Frankly a lot of law school really sucked – a quick search will reveal just how bad law school is for a given individual’s health. The law aspect of law school is not something I’d recommend. So much of that difficulty is needlessly created by the system itself and doesn’t reflect actual practice (which I enjoyed) – and on that topic you can find many an in-depth post on this very blog.

But the thing is, my law school experience was so much more than a law school experience. If there is one thing you’ve probably garnered from reading this far, is that I never viewed law school as a be-all, but rather as a chapter in the larger story of my life.

And in that regard, if Taco from three years ago said “Should I go?”

I would answer with an unequivocal “Yes.”

Because law school as a chapter – has been the most demanding, most frustrating, most stressful.. yet also, most wonderful, most powerful, most emotional, most liberating, eye-opening, mind-blowing, all around…

…greatest experience of my life.

Thanks for tagging along with me.

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Here’s to five more years of Dinosaur Bear – and the crazy roads that two adults, three dinosaurs, a polar bear, and a pig may travel.

Late night on a road along the Syrian border – Dinosaur Bear gets around.